Rockets: How the NBA botched the Danuel House investigation

Although NBA commissioner Adam Silver determined that Houston Rockets forward Danuel House violated bubble protocol, his arrival to the decision was erroneous and wildly inconsistent.

By now everyone knows who Danuel House is, for one reason or another. Houston Rockets fans view House as another great find by general manager Daryl Morey, as House was released by the superteam Golden State Warriors, leaving him available for Morey to sign him. House is also known for his 3-and-D ability, as he was the Rockets’ best 3-point shooter during the 2018-19 season and was one of their best shooters this past season.

But House has become known by the national media for a different reason of late. The Houston Rockets forward was recently under investigation for a potential violation of the NBA’s bubble protocol, which came at a bad time, as the Rockets sought to take down the LeBron James-led Los Angeles Lakers, who had the best record in the Western Conference this season.

The investigation forced House to miss Games 3 and 4 of the series, before it was subsequently determined that House had a coronavirus tester in his room for approximately eight hours, ruling him out for the remainder of the 2020 postseason. But in spite of the wrongdoing, there were several things about how the NBA’s investigation was handled that seemed peculiar.

For starters, the standards for handling investigations and/or suspensions across all sports leagues is to allow the player in question to continue to play while the investigation is underway. This is because the player hasn’t been determined to have violated rules, policies, and/or procedures so the only natural thing to do is to allow the investigation to run it’s course, because suspending before reaching a determination of guilt runs the risk of levying a penalty when said player may have been innocent.

The league office hasn’t been fully transparent about the situation, which has left NBA fans to fill in the blanks on their own about what may have really transpired and why Adam Silver’s crew may have gone about the situation in the secretive manner in which they’ve operated.

Next: Discrediting the COVID theory

The imaginary fear of a COVID-19 outbreak

There have been several popular theories behind the NBA’s decision to hold out House from games before completing the investigation. The first one is that Silver was afraid of a potential COVID-19 outbreak from the coronavirus tester that House is alleged to have had in his hotel room.

But if such a concern existed, the wise thing to do would have been to postpone Game 3, as opposed to having the players all take the court, and especially considering the timelines the league was operating under. According to Sam Amick and Shams Charania of The Athletic, the woman in question left the Rockets’ Grand Floridian hotel on Tuesday morning, which is the same day Game 3 took place between the Rockets and Lakers.

If there was a true concern about a potential COVID outbreak, surely a 12-hour turnaround wouldn’t alleviate that. Another thing that hasn’t been pointed out is the fact that the visitor stated that she interacted with two Rockets’ players, one of which being Tyson Chandler and the other remained unidentified, although she made it clear that she didn’t interact with House.

But Chandler was cleared on Wednesday and was allowed to join the team on Thursday for Game 4. The fact that Chandler was able to rejoin the team amidst an “investigation” in which the visitor stated that she was around him says two things: for starters, the league disregarded the witness, and secondly they weren’t concerned about a COVID outbreak, which further refutes that premise.

Next: Lack of evidence against House

The fallacy that the NBA knew that House was guilty

Another popular theory has been that the league had sufficient evidence to prove that House was in the wrong, thus sitting him out was simply a formality. But we’ve heard from respected sources that the league didn’t have any direct evidence connecting House to the woman, which is perplexing, considering that the hotel surely had cameras. If the woman visited House, one would think the cameras would have detected it.

It’s instead been reported that the league used “door data” to come to the decision that House broke protocol, as the data indicated that the door to House’s room opened at some point during the time when said visitor was in the hotel.

But why resort to such measures if there was no video evidence of such activity? And is it possible that House could have opened his door for any reason other than letting a visitor in his room?

The Houston Rockets’ brass have also been transparent about how they were left in the dark about what was going on with House,  but if the league had a mountain of evidence to suggest that House was in the wrong, why couldn’t they have provided it to the Rockets? Or even given any sort of update and/or explanation?

Next: Inconsistent outcomes

Abandoning an established precedent

House isn’t the first person to have alleged to violate the NBA’s bubble protocol, as LA Clippers guard Lou Williams also found himself at the center of a similarly embarrassing incident. Williams was granted permission to leave the bubble to attend the funeral of a loved one in Atlanta, and made a pit stop to popular strip club Magic City.

The former Houston Rockets guard contended that he was simply there for the chicken wings, which he’s publicly proclaimed his love for at the gentleman’s club. However, in the days that followed, one of the strippers stated that Williams left her a generous tip during his stop at the famed strip club, which eliminated any credence to the notion that Williams was simply “in and out” and there for the food, as he told NBA officials.

But Williams was given a 10-day quarantine and allowed to re-join the Clippers after serving his penalty, which set a precedent for handling such matters. However in House’s case, he wasn’t levied the same penalties, as he was ordered the leave the bubble for the remainder of the playoffs, and head back home to Houston.

Rockets fans have drawn criticism for pointing out that the league office handled House’s suspension in an unusual manner, but with all things considered, there are a myriad of unexplained circumstances that led up to the league’s announcement of House’s official punishment. There’s certainly more than what meets the eye, regardless of whether people want to face the facts or not.